Tag: amino

Shall the gringa take the time to debunk an anonymous “whistle-blower” who claims that the European Space Agency is in communication with extra-terrestrials under the guise of a comet-chasing space program? Yes, dear reader, let us please do and do so together. First, a few preliminary facts about the ESA’s comet chaser mission, the Rosetta space probe:

2004 Rosetta space probe launches for a ten year journey through space, chasing down a comet.

2014 Rosetta arrived and locked into a matching orbit with comet 67P, also known as Churyumov-Gerasimenko (which the gringa likes to refer to as Chur-Ger).

Philae lander module touches down on the surface of the comet and begins collecting scientific data and transmitting back to Earth.

Allegations by the ESA insider “whistle-blower”, sent anonymously by e-mail to a science blogger:

Chur-Ger is not a comet.

Chur-Ger is an object that has been sending signals received by NASA for over two decades.

Illegally obtained digital images were forwarded alleging that artificial structures exist on the surface of Chur-Ger.

Chur-Ger has an unusual movement pattern inconsistent with a trajectory or orbit of a natural celestial body.

NASA has records indicating that Chur-Ger has changed its trajectory rather than have another space object causing it.

Rosetta is not a comet chasing science mission but a cover-up for a joint NASA/ESA military style reconnaissance mission to discover just what the heck Chur-Ger really is.

Facts gathered from official ESA Rosetta mission reports:

November 12, 2014, Philae successfully landed on the comet (a first time ever maneuver).

May 27, 2016 the amino acid glycine was detected in the comet’s atmosphere. This amino acid is necessary for the construction of DNA and cell membranes. The building blocks of life were found on the comet which lends credence to the Anthropocene theory of how life began on Earth, life creating substances being delivered to Earth by hitchhiking on a comet or asteroid which collided with our planet.

Chur-Ger was not the first comet to have life creating amino acids (re: comet Wild-2 & NASA’s Stardust mission)

Glycine does not require water to form, solving the origins of life in outer space theory problem of no liquid water yet found on any celestial object other than Earth.

Phosphorus was also detected which is necessary for DNA to form a framework and for cells to transport chemical energy.

March 11, 2016 the ESA reports that there is an interesting magnetic-free bubble surrounding Chur-Ger’s nucleus and extending outward about 4,000 km. Basically, the comet is not magnetized. The de-magnetized properties results in the comet’s trajectory being affected in ways that are not typical for celestial objects.

April 7, 2016 it was reported that Chur-Ger changed colors. Within the months after Rosetta’s arrival, Chur-Ger was very near the Sun. The heat from the Sun stripped away older surface materials and newer, brighter materials were exposed. Reflective properties changed. Chur-Ger changed from being a dark object to a brighter, bluer object. In all, the comet became about 34% brighter.

April 26, 2016 Philae lander awakens and begins data collection but does not begin transmitting data until June 13.

July 9, 2015 the Philae lander enters hibernation mode and discontinues data transmission. It is suspected that dust from Chur-Ger may be coating Philae’s solar panels, interfering with their ability to recharge.

September 2016, after years of providing scientists with fascinating data about comets, the Rosetta mission comes to an end as the space probe slowly crash-lands onto the comet. (Even in outer space humans are litter bugs.)

One reason that space agencies are willing to spend billions studying comets is that they are the best resources to find the origins of life. They have basically been frozen in time, the same today as they were billions of years ago. They are the perfect reservoirs to contain the primitive biological material that may have resulted in you and I today.

Although the possibility of a secret mission involving communication with extra-terrestrials sounds exciting, the gringa is equally excited over the actual findings of the building blocks of life on a comet. To consider that humans are really the extra-terrestrials after all, that we all originated from somewhere in outer space, is utterly compelling. That means we are all truly the children of stardust or we have a home world somewhere which begs the questions of: A. Is it still inhabited? B. If not still inhabited, are there ruins and artifacts to be discovered that will shed light on who our ancient ancestors were? C. Have comets deposited life building blocks on other planets that have also evolved into intelligent life?

So, although the whistle-blower suspects humans in communication with ETs on a comet, the gringa believes every human may already be communicating with ETs every day just by talking to each other! So, in essence, the Rosetta mission, in search of the origins of human life in outer space, is also on a search for extra-terrestrials like the whistle-blower claims. It’s really a search for ourselves, because the gringa suspects that we are not really from around here.

Dot dot dot-dash dash dash-dot dot dot. Dear readers, do you know what that is? It is SOS in Morse Code. All radio operators know this. It is an understood code that crosses all language barriers. The gringa, fascinated with all things space, then has to ask, does this include extra-terrestrials? Well, who knows?!

Now, the SETI Institute (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligent Life) doesn’t really make it a practice to emit signals in their search for ETs, rather, they listen to outer space “noise”. NASA’s search for extra-terrestrial life isn’t so much for little green men to have a conversation with, but, rather, the origins of life such as amino acids, ribonucleotides (RNA) and certain gases such as oxygen, methane, ammonia, hydrogen, and, of course, water.

However, Earthlings have been inadvertently sending out all sorts of signals into space for over five decades. As technological devices fill the Earth, transmission signals fill the heavens: radio broadcasts, television signals, radar blips and bleeps, etc. So, why do we not purposely send a message designed to create a favorable first impression rather than let all this mish-mash represent humankind? Does NASA and SETI believe that no one exists, thus no one is listening or do they believe there may be inherent danger in seeking out contact? Evidently the reason is because there is no consensus, yet, within the scientific community. The professionals are ARGUING. Hmph.

Douglas Vakoch, a researcher with SETI, thinks that it may be time to have an international discussion on the subject and let the public’s opinion on the matter be heard. He is on the pro-sending signals side of the argument. He proposes transmitting radio signals to hundreds of stars within eighty-two light years of our home planet. This can be accomplished with the radio telescope at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.

Renowned physicist, Stephen Hawking, on the other hand, thinks this is a bad idea. By sending out so many signals to every Tom, Dick and Harry alien out there, we could communicate with the good, the bad and the ugly. He believes we should be much more cautious in our approach.

So, it seems that, although there is no consensus within the scientific community on whether or not we should initiate communication, there is a consensus that somewhere out there is intelligent life that would not only receive the signals, but would be capable of responding, perhaps in person. The gringa says, “Hmmm.”

Now, the telescope at Arecibo has already sent a space message back in 1974. Consisting of an intricate code, it was transmitted to a cluster of stars 25,000 light years away.

The Crimeans sent out four messages to the cosmos from 1999 until 2008. They were transmitted from the Yevpatoria RT-70 radio telescope at Crimea’s Center for Deep Space Communications. Their ET messages were entitled: “Cosmic Call”, “Teen Age Message”, “Cosmic Call 2”, and “A Message From Earth”. The messages were made up of binary code, repeating signals, musical compositions, photographs, whale songs, etc.

Scientists believed that it is important to purposely beam thoughtful messages into deep space rather than let ETs believe all Earthlings are like the Kardashians, or the Zodiac killer, or Archie Bunker. Although Earthlings have been flooding outer space with signals since the beginning of the television era, most of our daily technologies do not have signals that are sufficiently strong enough to be picked up by our nearest living ET neighbors’ light years away. Although, if they are advanced enough, they have probably detected something by now.

So, if SETI and the Crimeans have already sent out some transmissions, the gringa then wonders, “What’s the big deal about sending more?” And, if our own daily barrage of digital signals and radio waves have the possibility of already being detected, what’s the point of “laying low”? If an ET civilization is super advanced to the point they could easily dominate us, yet they haven’t shown up and taken over, why be so worried? It seems they could care less.

The gringa thinks the real reason why the scientists can’t stop arguing and just get to the business at hand is an age old reason. Power struggle. Tsk, tsk. How disappointing. The gringa believed that surely, of all human beings, scientists were above such nonsense. As scientists consider the possibility of the most ground-breaking and historical event EVER playing out, they eye one another suspiciously and wonder just who is going to get the credit. Yes. Exactly who gets to devise the message, approve it and send it as the representative of the entire Earth?!

So, although there are researchers who want to open up the subject to public debate, that also opens it up to the general host of problems that goes along with human nature. Venturing into the area of communicating with an alien race would mean the establishment of protocols. Who gets to decide who we Earthlings talk to and what we talk about?

Although SETI wants to actively transmit in hopes of communicating with extra-terrestrials, the official policy of the institute is that the final decision belongs to the people of Earth. Such a decision affects all humans. It could be the single-most life affecting decision for mankind. Therefore, it should be left in the hands of all the people and not just a few “experts”.

Many other leaders in the space exploration community are in agreement, such as former Senior Scientist for Astrobiology in NASA’s planetary protection office, John Rummel and SpaceX founder, Elon Musk. Pioneering American astronomer, Geoff Marcy, who has discovered many “extrasolar” planets, believes it is important that every culture, even deep jungle indigenous peoples, upon Earth have the opportunity to have their voices heard in such a decision that will affect every person worldwide.

The discussion on this issue will probably continue to heat up because, recently, some interesting radio signals have been detected by astronomers who have been left scratching their heads and wondering if they could, perhaps, be a signal from intelligent beings, seeing that, like one of our own repeated signal transmissions, this signal also repeated itself.

If a repeating signal has been detected in deep space, could it have other origins than intelligent beings purposely transmitting? Canadian scientist Paul Scholz finds the mystery rather exciting and believes this to be an important discovery and wants to know if the signals originated with living, breathing ETs or if a star just went “kaplooie” and it’s just a “coincidence” that it created a shockwave noise that mimics a man-made (or little green man-made) artificial, repeating signal.

Until the signals began repeating, scientists theorized the rapid bursts of radio signals resulted from a star that went supernova and exploded or, perhaps, a neutron star collapsing into a black hole. But, now that the signals are identical and repeating, the same scientists don’t quite know what to think.

In addition to a repeating pattern, there are other singular differences that set the signals apart from other space “noise”. When studied further, the signals are “brighter” and in a different “spot” on the “spectrum” of other fast radio burst signals (FRBs). These details are all well and good, but all the gringa wants to know is, “Are we alone or not?”

The closest I can get to a straight answer is what a Cornell University astronomy professor has to say. According to Professor James Cordes, whatever charge is powering the signal, it is powerful enough to repeat the signal cycle within minutes. The energy packed behind the transmission must be impressive because they are extraordinarily bright, thus enabling us to see them from very, very, very, very, far away. And, the power source must also be incredibly secure and amazingly strong and durable because it is not destroyed by the transmission of an exploding-star-scale blast and is capable of repeating the exploding-star-scale blast.

To put all of this in a nutshell, five fast radio burst signals were captured by the Parkes radio telescope in New South Wales, Australia. Rather than just be a single burst of energy, these are double bursts, two bursts separated by 2.4 milliseconds, consistently. They repeated five times. The origins of the signals could be as far away as several billion light years beyond the Milky Way Galaxy, our home turf in the cosmos.

The gringa has no answer and remains intrigued. And my vote is that we send our own signals.

The gringa is most definitely a “Trekkie”. No big surprise there, eh? I just love all the gadgets they have on those shows. One of my favorites is the “tri-corder” (which, forever and a day I thought was actually “tri-quarter”). This little doo-dad scanned, analyzed and recorded data. It could detect life forms through a rock wall or diagnose a disease or injury. Well, guess what? NASA may very well be getting some! They’re not called “tri-corder” but, the concept is the same.

This fascinating invention is the brain child of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory that’s located in Pasadena, California. It’s small, portable and called a “chemical laptop”. Personally, I think that name has absolutely no imagination and wish they could have come up with something more akin to “tri-corder”, but no one asked me. If they had I would have called it something like “hand lab” or “Doal” (Detector of alien life) or maybe “Cie” (Coolest invention ever) or, as you will read later and understand, “Spacespresso” (my personal favorite). But, like I said, no one asked me.

This chemical “laptop” is actually not a laptop at all. It’s really a miniature laboratory, about the size of a regular laptop and thicker. The above picture shows the chemical laptop sitting beside a regular laptop, both on top of a rover. The chemical laptop analyzes material samples for signs of life. If it ever makes the grade for an off-world mission it will be an historic moment as being the most sensitive technological device to ever leave planet Earth.

NASA has big dreams of sending it to Mars or Europa. If they get their big chance, instead of using the “laptop” to scan a bit of this or that, it will, gulp, swallow the sample. (The gringa envisions memories of the “Hungry, Hungry, Hippo” game I played as a child.) Once consumed, the laptop can be programmed through various “apps” (we all know what those are!) to test for all sorts of things like amino acids or fatty acids, which are the basic building blocks of life as we know it.

Now, at this turn in the story the gringa gets totally sidetracked with the amino acid thing. As I peruse my research material I scratch my little head and think, “Really? I had no idea!” Taking the risk that my dear reader may already know interesting tidbits about amino acids, I will share what fascinated me so.

Apparently, amino acids are either right-handed or left-handed. In other words, there are two types that are mirror images of each other. The left-handed booger is the standard for life as we know it on Earth. As NASA studies samples, they are looking for samples that are predominantly one or the other. A 50/50 mix is not considered to be a biological form.

The challenge for NASA has been developing a way to look for both types in a single sample. And, VOILA! The chemical laptop! Now, this little lab needs liquid samples which are not easily found on other planets that are usually colossal frozen rocks in orbit. Now, for you folks that love your espresso machines, you will totally get the technology involved to mix a sample with a bit of water then heat the mix until some of the sample’s organic molecules mix with the water.

When “Spacespresso” then receives the liquid sample it injects a fluorescent dye into it. The sample flows over a microchip that detects which is a leftie or which is a rightie. These pass by a laser and are separated according to leftie or rightie status. Once separated, the lefties and righties are mixed with a chemical that interacts specifically with one or the other. Finally, they emerge into a channel and the scientists can then determine how many lefties and how many righties there are.

Field tests began in 2014, which is the first step to reaching the ultimate goal of getting “Spacespresso” to Mars. The next field test is going to be in the Atacama Desert in Chile. NASA, true to its mission of helping all mankind with its work, is considering how this technology can also be of benefit in the world of medicine and not just their own Mars mission dreams. The gringa waits with bated breath.